Indoor air quality continues to be an area of public concern even after the enactment of legislation restricting smoking and other potentially hazardous practices. Much of the current concern about indoor air is related to odors, and specifically to perfumes, perfumed hygiene products and room "de-odorizers." Legislation was recently introduced in Marin County, California to restrict the use of fragrance products in county buildings. Other public organizations have already restricted fragrance use in buildings (School of Social Work, University of Minnesota) and "artificial odors" are often cited as contributing to or triggering debilitating episodes for sufferers of multiple chemical sensitivity disorder. Despite the public concern for the effects of fragrances, little peer-reviewed scientific evidence exists about the effect of these odors on health, behavior, and self-reports of well-being, and the studies which do address this topic are mixed as to their findings. The proposed research project seeks to evaluate the effects of odorants such as perfumes, room de-odorizers, and food odors on cognitive performance and associated neurophysiological responses. Specifically, the effects of odors will be tested on subjects completing behavioral studies of linguistic processing and spatial processing. Preliminary data suggest that odors differentially affect these tasks. Electrophysiological recordings (event-related potentials) will be made during the linguistic, spatial, and odor stimuli to evaluate the potential neural and attentional mechanisms influenced by the odors. An important feature of this project is the use of auditory and visual stimuli as control conditions. Since any type of stimulus introduced during a cognitive task may impede performance, control stimuli will be introduced in a manner similar to the odor stimuli. This will allow any odor effects on performance and/or electrophysiology to be compared relative to effects in other modalities. The specific aims of this project are 1) to introduce a behavioral/electrophysiological paradigm for the evaluation of potentially distracting odors, 2) to use the paradigm to evaluate typical odors found in room air and quantify their effects on task performance and neurophysiology, and 3) to expand research opportunities for undergraduate students.